Okay, it's been a while since I've timed my car. '88 Town Car, SEFI, etc. I have timed cars before, but I've also timed bikes with both CDI and points, and they have a tendency of mixing up in my head as the procedure for each vehicle is very different.
However, I don't believe I made any mistakes here. I disconnected the spark plug wire for cylinder 1 (it's at the frontmost cylinder on the passenger side, right) at the distributor (because the engine was too hot to remove the plug boot at the plug itself) and connected my timing light, then reconnected the plug wire on top of the timing light.
Then I loosened the hold-down clamp. Pulled out the SPOUT plug. Found 10* BTDC on the harmonic balancer and marked it beforehand.
I started the car and aimed the timing light at the balancer. 10* BTDC was not anywhere near the little pointer thing, (IIRC 10*BTDC is supposed to be at the sharp pointer and TDC is supposed to be in the circular part, right?)
If that's true, and I have not done anything wrong so far, the car is timed at somewhere closer to 30*BTDC... at least that's what I'm reading it as.
That doesn't make sense to me. If it was truely that far off, the car should not even run, let alone as well as it does, correct? Just to see what the car would do, I went to rotate the distributor a little bit, but found that it was stuck fast. I loosened the hold down clamp to the point that it was wiggling to make sure it was not inhibiting the distributor whatsoever. Still, even with two hands, I could not budge that son of a bitch at all. I attempted to twist it to the point that I was getting afraid I might break the cap. Would not move at ALL. I timed this car ~6 months ago and I was able to freely rotate the distributor by hand back then.
Am I missing something? What the Christ is happening here?
However, I don't believe I made any mistakes here. I disconnected the spark plug wire for cylinder 1 (it's at the frontmost cylinder on the passenger side, right) at the distributor (because the engine was too hot to remove the plug boot at the plug itself) and connected my timing light, then reconnected the plug wire on top of the timing light.
Then I loosened the hold-down clamp. Pulled out the SPOUT plug. Found 10* BTDC on the harmonic balancer and marked it beforehand.
I started the car and aimed the timing light at the balancer. 10* BTDC was not anywhere near the little pointer thing, (IIRC 10*BTDC is supposed to be at the sharp pointer and TDC is supposed to be in the circular part, right?)
If that's true, and I have not done anything wrong so far, the car is timed at somewhere closer to 30*BTDC... at least that's what I'm reading it as.
That doesn't make sense to me. If it was truely that far off, the car should not even run, let alone as well as it does, correct? Just to see what the car would do, I went to rotate the distributor a little bit, but found that it was stuck fast. I loosened the hold down clamp to the point that it was wiggling to make sure it was not inhibiting the distributor whatsoever. Still, even with two hands, I could not budge that son of a bitch at all. I attempted to twist it to the point that I was getting afraid I might break the cap. Would not move at ALL. I timed this car ~6 months ago and I was able to freely rotate the distributor by hand back then.
Am I missing something? What the Christ is happening here?
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